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John Byrne Leicester Warren
John Byrne Leicester Warren, 3rd Baron De Tabley (26 April 1835 - 22 November 1895), was an English poet, numismatist, botanist, and authority on bookplates. Life Overview Warren, eldest son of the 2nd Lord De Tabley, was educated at Eton and Oxford, and was for a time attached to the British Embassy at Constantinople. He wrote poems of a very high order, some of them published under the pseudonyms of "George F. Preston" and "William Lancaster." These were followed by 2 dramas, Philoctetes (1866) and Orestes (1868). Later works in his own name were Rehearsals (1870), Searching the Net (1873), The Soldier's Fortune (a tragedy). Poems: Dramatic and lyrical (1893) included selections from former works. After his death appeared Orpheus in Thrace (1901). He was a man of sensitive temperament, and was latterly much of a recluse. He was an accomplished botanist, and wrote a work on the Flora of Cheshire.John William Cousin, "Tabley De, John Byron Leicester Warren, 3rd Lord," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 370. Wikisource, Web, Mar. 10, 2018. Youth and education Warrem was the eldest son of George Warren, 2nd baron de Tabley (1811–1887), Sir John Fleming Leicester, 1st baron, was his grandfather. His mother was Catherina Barbara, daughter of Jerome, count de Salis-Soglio, by his 3rd wife, Henrietta, daughter of William Foster, bishop of Kilmore.Garnett, 415. The poet was born at Tabley House, Cheshire, on 26 April 1835. From his mother he appears to have inherited the sensitive melancholy of his temperament, augmented by long sojourn with her in Italy and Germany during his childhood. Returning to England, he received his education at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, matriculating on 20 October 1852, and earning a B.A. in 1859 and an M.A. the next year. He left the university with a 2nd class in classics and history. At Oxford he formed a close friendship with a fellow-collegian, George Fortescue, whose death by an accident in 1859 produced an ineffaceable impression upon his mind. Warren's `1st impulse towards poetry came from Fortescue, with whom he shared a close companionship during his Oxford days, and whom he lost, as Tennyson lost Hallam, within a few years of their taking their degrees. A short time before Fortescue's death the friends jointly published a small volume of Poems under the pseudonym of "George F. Preston". Fortescue was killed by falling from the mast of Lord Drogheda’s yacht in November 1859, and this gloomy event plunged De Tabley into deep depression.Waugh, 110. Career Upon leaving Oxford, Warren, after a brief interlude of diplomacy under Lord Stratford de Redcliffe at Constantinople, was in 1860 called to the bar from Lincoln's Inn; but probably had no serious intention of following the law, for which he labored under every imaginable disqualification. He manifested some interest in country life, became and long continued to be an officer of the Cheshire yeomanry, and in 1868 unsuccessfully contested Mid-Cheshire in the liberal interest. Upon his father's 2nd marriage, in 1871, he took up his residence in London. Between 1859 and 1862 Warren issued 4 little volumes of pseudonymous verse (by "G.F. Preston"), in the production of which he had been greatly stimulated by the sympathy of Fortescue. Once more he assumed a pseudonym — his Praeterita (1863) bearing the name of "William Lancaster". In the next year he published Eclogues and Monodramas, followed in 1865 by Studies in Verse. These volumes all displayed technical grace and much natural beauty; but it was not till the publication of Philoctetes in 1866 that Warren met with any wide recognition. Philoctetes bore the initials “M.A.,” which, to the author’s dismay, were interpreted as meaning Matthew Arnold. Warren at once disclosed his identity, and received the congratulations of his friends, among whom were Tennyson, Browning, and Gladstone. In 1867 he published Orestes, in 1870 Rehearsals, and in 1873 Searching the Net. These last 2 bore his own name, John Leicester Warren. He was somewhat disappointed by their lukewarm reception, and when in 1876 The Soldier of Fortune, a drama on which he had bestowed much careful labor, proved a complete failure, he retired altogether from the literary arena. "Seized," as Theodore Watts-Dunton expresses it, "with a deep dislike of the literary world and its doings," he became almost a hermit in London, though retaining his regard for many old friends, and for some, such as William Bell Scott and Sir A.W. Franks, to whom he was united by a community of tastes. His pursuits were many and interesting; he was a skilled numismatist, and already (1863) the author of an essay on Greek coins as illustrative of Greek federal history; an enthusiastic botanist, which accounts for much of the minute description observable in his poems; and an early amateur of the now favorite pursuit of collecting book-plates, upon which he produced a standard work, A Guide to the Study of Book Plates (ex-libris), London, 1880, 8vo. His Flora of Cheshire was prepared from 2 posthumous manuscripts by Spencer Moore, and was published in 1899 with a prefatory memoir by Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff. In 1887 Warren succeeded to the title of De Tabley by the death of his father, and immediately found himself immersed in a multitude of business cares which seemed to render the pursuit of poetry more difficult than ever. It was not until 1893 that he was persuaded to return, and the immediate success in that year of his Poems: Dramatic and lyrical, encouraged him to publish a 2nd series in 1895, the year of his death. The genuine interest with which these volumes were welcomed did much to lighten the last years of a somewhat sombre and solitary life. He will live as an impassioned writer who chose poetry for his medium, though not inevitably a poet. As a man his character was one of singular charm. His most intimate friends, Edmond Gosse, Watts-Dunton, and Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, exhaust themselves in eulogies of his gentleness, considerateness, urbanity, and high-minded disinterestedness, and only lament the anguish he inflicted upon himself by excessive sensitiveness. A naturally delicate constitution, undermined by an attack of influenza, gradually gave way, and he died somewhat suddenly on 22 November 1895. He was buried at Little Peover, Cheshire. He was unmarried, and the peerage became extinct, while the baronetcy devolved on a distant cousin. Writing De Tabley's loss was equally regretted as a poet and as a man. In the former capacity he cannot be named among those who have been possessed by an overmastering inspiration. He has little lyrical gift, his poems usually convey the impression of careful composition, and his principal claims as a mere writer are the "brocaded," as Edmund Gosse happily expresses it, stateliness of his diction, the vivid originality of his natural descriptions, and an occasional pungency of phrase. But if the poet sometimes disappears, the man is ever visible. His emotions are always genuine, and when the feeling becomes intense the writer is thoroughly himself, discards imitative mannerism, and emancipates himself from the influence of other poets. This is especially the case in his dramas and in the monologues approximating to the drama which form so large a portion of his poetical work. His earliest volume, Poems (with George Fortescue 1859) contained nothing remarkable, but several of Warren's poems were afterwards remodeled by the author and treated with more effect. Ballads and Metrical Sketches (1860), The Threshold of Atrides (1861), and Glimpses of Antiquity (1862) followed under the same pseudonym ("George F. Preston"), and all fell dead from the press. More power was evinced in Præterita (1863), Eclogues and Monodramas (1864), and Studies in Verse (1865), all published under the pseudonym of "William Lancaster." The blank verse poems of which these volumes chiefly consist are Tennysonian in style and substance, but the freshness of the natural descriptions reveals a man who had looked on nature with his own eyes. The interval 1866-1870 was distinguished by 3 considerable efforts in verse. Philoctetes, a tragedy, published anonymously in 1866, is the most powerful of Lord de Tabley's works. It departs from the Greek model in the introduction of a female character and in its gloomy pessimism, as remote as possible from the reconciling effect which Greek art aimed at producing. But these divergencies at all events preserve it from being a mere copy of Sophocles; nor is the influence of either Tennyson or Browning very apparent. The principal character seems in not a few respects a portrait of the author himself. Orestes, a tragedy, published anonymously in 1868, was hardly less powerful than Philoctetes, but attracted little attention.Garnett, 416. The volume of poems modestly entitled Rehearsals, and also published under the pseudonym of "William Lancaster," indicates that the influence of Tennyson, though still strong, was yielding to that of Browning and Swinburne. "The Strange Parable," however, and "Nimrod," blank-verse poems very finely conceived, strike an original note, and "Misrepresentation" is intensely individual. In another miscellaneous collection, entitled with equal modesty Searching the Net (1873), the author finally placed his name upon the title-page. Here the poet's power, his dramatic efforts apart, culminates in the grandiose "Jael," the singularly intense "Count of Senlis," and the pathetic "Ocean Grave;" and as the volume is mainly concerned with the description of nature and the expression of subjective feeling — departments in which he was entirely at home — he is less indebted than formerly to his predecessors. Had he now done what he did when, 20 years afterwards, he published a carefully winnowed selection of his poems, he must have taken a high place; but he unfortunately gave his time to the most hopeless of all poetical undertakings — the composition of a very long and entirely undramatic tragedy. No copies of The Soldier's Fortune (1876) were sold, and Warren's disappointment, aggravated by private causes of sorrow, for a long time paralysed his activity as a poet. An impulse, however, came from an unexpected quarter. In 1891 Alfred H. Miles published in his Poets of the Century an excellent selection from Lord de Tabley's poems, with an appreciative criticism. The author could not but feel encouraged; and, although still sincerely reluctant to make another trial of the public he had hitherto found so uncongenial, suffered himself to be persuaded by Watts-Dunton and John Lane to republish the best of his poems with additions. The volume, entitled Poems: Dramatic and lyrical (London, 1893, 8vo, illustrated by C.S. Ricketts), obtained full public recognition for a man who had seemed entirely forgotten. A succeeding volume, issued in 1895 as a 2nd series of the foregoing, could not rival the selected work of 30 years, but proved that much might still have been expected from the author if his physical powers had not begun to forsake him. The characteristics of De Tabley's poetry are pre-eminently magnificence of style (derived from close study of Milton), sonority, dignity, weight and color. His passion for detail was both a strength and a weakness: it lent a loving fidelity to his description of natural objects, but it sometimes involved him in a loss of simple effect from over-elaboration of treatment. He was always a student of the classic poets, and drew much of his inspiration directly from them. He was a true and a whole-hearted artist, who, as a brother poet well said, "still climbed the clear cold altitudes of song." His ambition was always for the heights, a region naturally ice-bound at periods, but always a country of clear atmosphere and bright, vivid outlines. Critical introduction by John Drinkwater When we decide that a poet’s station is in the 2nd rank, it is well to remember that we cannot reasonably mean that his most distinguished qualities are in themselves of a secondary or inferior kind. If that were so, we should not in sanity spend any time on him at all. There can be no compromise with mediocrity in these matters; but mediocrity is not at all the same thing as clouded or congested excellence. Every poet who claims our consideration, not merely forcing a moment of unwilling attention, must do so by virtue of qualities that the greatest would be content to share with him. It is absurd to suppose that the purely poetic essence can be measured by degrees of goodness: that essential poetry may be good, and better, and best. The elements of poetry may be manifold, and a poet may be endowed with few or many of these, but in so far as he is possessed of any of them, he possesses them absolutely and not relatively. If he never achieves anything more than what might be called a fairly good lyric line, we are foolish to give him a thought; if he achieves one perfect lyric line, thereby winning from us one moment of rapt attention, and does no more, in that moment of achievement he stands worthily with the masters. The difference is that the great masters are able to exercise their essential poetic faculties much more continuously and freely than he; their song is not confounded by nearly so many distractions as his, nor subject to the same indiscretions, which are, as it were, external to the pure poetic impulse. In the master, the poetry is liberated more certainly and with more sustained splendor. The poet of the 2nd rank habitually finds his poetic utterance in conflict with some alien force, and the result is that frequent clouding or congestion. No more striking illustration of this fact could be well found than the work of Lord de Tabley. Of the essential elements of poetry there is scarcely any with which he was not richly, very richly, endowed. It was in no thin vein that poetry worked in his spirit; it flowed abundantly and was liberal of its many virtues. He perceived the world clearly and intensely as a poet, he was fortunate in a scholarship that quickened and mellowed his vision, he had an exquisitely inherited and trained manner, he had a great sense of diction and an almost phenomenal vocabulary, and his poetic temper was nobly sensitive to all thrilling and poignant beauty. And yet, for all his splendid qualities, his is not among the great names. In reading through his work, imposing in volume, there is scarcely a page that does not reward us with some notable excellence; scarcely one that does not force us to the opinion that never was there more exasperating genius. The poetry is disturbed in its movement by something over which it seems to have no dominion. As is generally the case, this disturbing factor is not constant, though with de Tabley it is commonly the product of a characteristic disability — a kind of intellectual inertia, a refusal, that in the light of his proved judgment and gifts must seem to be almost deliberate, to spend that last ounce of energy that must always go to the achievement of perfection, in poetry as in other things. From positive blemishes his work is remarkably free; indeed he may, in comparison with almost any poet of whom one can think, be said to be almost impeccable in this matter. Poor or false images such as — : “Where our lips were merely noise :Of babies wrangling with a sleepy man;” — and — : “Mere-waves solid as a clod, :Roar with skaters thunder-shod …” are so rare in his work as to be startling when they are found, while "Sorrow Invincible" may be said to be his only entirely poor poem. The trouble is, rather, a too frequent failure of mere driving force. In the 1st place, 6 out of 7 of his poems, even his short pieces, are too long, and this we always feel not to be due to a defective art or to lack of intellectual power, but just to intellectual drifting. Again, it is common enough to find single lines and phrases in the midst of excellent work that we are sure he could have bettered by a movement of the pen: “The rose of youth upon your face, My name upon your lips, The rippling trees, the lonely place, The sails of harbour ships …” That is delightful, but who with any feeling for poetry does not ache to have been an imp in the poet’s brain when that last line was written? When, however, every deduction has been made on account of his general weakness,— and the penalty is a heavy one, depriving a poet, who we feel might so easily have secured them, of the highest honours — de Tabley remains a poet of great distinction, one whose place in the history of English poetry is secure. Of detailed felicities his work is full. : “My frown is like a winter house :Laid eastward in a bitter land …” and— : “The vivid martin strikes the lake …” and— : “Where in among the fleeces of the sheep, Like small and burnished rooks, the starlings call …” might be matched in nearly every poem he wrote. Mr. Gosse, in one of his kit-kat essays, has pointed to this wealth of beautiful detail as de Tabley’s most striking achievement. While, however, it is in giving beauty to its parts that he is commonly successful, and in bringing his poem to a finely constructed and concentrated whole that he commonly fails, he must not be supposed to be entirely without this larger co-ordinating faculty. His 2 long dramas designed after a classic model, Philoctetes and Orestes, are both finely wrought poems, not only rich in admirable touches, but in each case carried through on an ambitious plan to a memorable conclusion. Indeed, it would be pleasant to quote from the former play, which at moments — as, for example, when Philoctetes bids farewell to the Lemnians — reaches a nobility that can remind us of none but the greatest. In his shorter poems a reader might perhaps wish that he turned less constantly for his subjects to classical mythology. Not that he handled these subjects ill; on the contrary, he moves here with his most assured ease. And yet the frequent remoteness of interest, the reiteration of established imagery, the evocation of an emotion from a literary memory rather than from direct experience, are apt to grow a little enervating. His poetry in this kind, though it would be folly to question its sincerity, loses some companionable quality. We remember then that de Tabley was a lonely and secluded man, and we feel that here is rather a lonely and secluded poetry. His poems of the English country-side, however, are quite another matter. He is one of the rare poets who can bring all the precision of a trained naturalist to the service of poetry, and with him the display of minute knowledge is as delightful as it commonly is tedious. He made successful experiments too, such as The Sale at the Farm, in a homely manner not altogether apt to his genius, and in one at least of his more whimsical moods he achieved, in the "Study of a Spider", a masterpiece of its kind.from John Drinkwater, "Critical Introduction: Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)," The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, Mar. 27, 2016. Publications Poetry *''Poems'' ( with George Fortescue; as "George F. Preston"). London: W. Kent, 1859. *''Ballads and Metrical Sketches'' (as "George F. Preston"). London: W. Kent, 1860. *''The Threshold of Atrides'' (as "George F. Preston"). London: W. Kent, 1861. *''Glimpses of Antiquity'' (as "George F. Preston"). London: W. Kent, 1862. *''Praeterita'' (as "William P. Lancaster"). London & Cambridge, UK: Macmillan, 1863. *''Eclogues and Monodramas'' (as "William P. Lancaster").. London: Macmillan, 1864. *''Studies in Verse'' (as "William P. Lancaster"). London: Macmillan, 1865. *''Rehearsals: A book of verses'' (as "William P. Lancaster"). London: Strahan, 1870. *''Searching the Net: A book of verses. London: Strahan, 1873. *Poems Dramatic and Lyrical. London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane / New York: Macmillan, 1893. *Poems Dramatic and Lyrical: Second series. London: John Lane / New York: Macmillan, 1895. *Orpheus in Thrace, and other poems. London: Smith, Elder, 1901. *The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley. London: Chapman & Hall, 1903. *''Select Poems of Lord De Tabley (edited by John Drinkwater). London: Humphrey Milford, 1924. Plays *''Philoctetes: A metrical drama''. London: Alfred W. Bennett, 1866. *''Orestes: : A metrical drama''. London: Alfred W. Bennett, 1867. *''The Soldier of Fortune: A tragedy in five acts''. London: Smith, Elder, 1876, Fiction *''A Screw Loose: A novel'' (as "William P. Lancaster"). (3 volumes), London: Bentley, 1868. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III. *''Ropes of Sand: A novel. (3 volumes), London: Bentley, 1869. ''Volume I, Volume II, Volume III. *''Hence These Tears: A novel. (3 volumes), London: Bentley, 1872. ''Volume I, Volume II, Volume III. *''Salvia Richmond: A novel'' (anonymous). (3 volumes), London: Bentley, 1878. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III. Non-fiction *''An Essay on Federal Greek Coinage. London & Cambridge, UK: Macmillan, 1863 **reprinted as ''Greek Federal Coinage. Chicago: Argonaut, 1969. *''The Copper Coinage of the Achaean League''. London: 1864. *''The Flora of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens''. London: Taylor, 1871. *''A Guide to the Study of Book-plates (Ex-libris). London: John Pearson, 1880. *''The Flora of Cheshire. London & New York: Longmans Green, 1899. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au: John Byrne Leicester Warren, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Dec. 8, 2013. See also * List of British poets References * . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 10, 2018. *Christopher Hussey, "Tabley Hall: The seat of Mr. C. Leicester Warren", Country Life 54 (July 21 1923), 84. * . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 10, 2018. *Reminiscences by Edmund Gosse in the Contemporary Review for 1896, republished in the writer's Critical Kit-Kats; notice by Theodore Watts-Dunton in the Athenæum of 30 November 1895; Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff's memoir prefixed to the Flora of Cheshire, 1899, and his notice in the Spectator of 7 December 1895. Notes External links ;Poems *"The Island of Circe" *"Autumn Love" *Warren, John Byrne Leicester (1835-1895) ("Dithyramb" & "The Study of a Spider") at Representative Poetry Online *John Byrne Leicester Warren at PoemHunter (2 poems) *Lord de Tabley in The English Poets: An anthology: "Sonnet: "Rosy delight that changest day by day", Sonnet: "My heart is vext with this fantastic fear", "Autumn Love," "The Study of a Spider," "A Leave-taking," "Misrepresentation" * Lord De Tabley in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "A Simple Maid," "Fortune's Wheel," "Circe," "A Song of Faith Forsworn," "The Two Old Kings," "A Woodland Grave" *John Byrne Leicester Warren, 3d Baron De Tabley at Poetry Nook (7 poems) ;Books *John Byrne Leicester Warren at the Online Books Page ;Audio / video *John Byrne Leicester Warren poems at YouTube ;About * Original article is at "De Tabley, John Byrne Leicester Warren" * Warren, John Byrne Leicester ;Etc. *Tabley House Official website Category:1835 births Category:1895 deaths Category:English poets Category:Old Etonians Category:Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford Category:Cheshire Yeomanry officers Category:19th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:People from Cheshire